Nvidia Corp cofounder Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) celebrated the new year with staff during his first trip to China in four years, a low-key tour that coincided with growing concerns about Beijing’s ability to get around US chip restrictions.
He visited Nvidia’s offices in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing earlier this month, a person familiar with the matter said.
Images and video of the 60-year-old donning colorful traditional Chinese garb and dancing with staff emerged online over the weekend.
Photo: screen grab from Phoenix Television
It was unclear if he had held formal meetings with other executives or officials, said the source, who asked not to be named discussing a private visit.
Huang embarked on his tour — first reported by state newspapers off of Chinese social media posts — as Nvidia’s artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators become pivotal in a tech race between Washington and Beijing.
Huang has warned that an escalation in sanctions designed to cut off the flow of AI training chips could drive Chinese firms to develop their own alternatives.
That could harm US tech leaders in the long run, he said.
The Nvidia cofounder name-checked Huawei Technologies Co (華為) — which last year alarmed Washington by including an advanced made-in-China processor in a smartphone — as a potential rival.
An Nvidia representative confirmed Huang had celebrated the upcoming Lunar New Year with staff, without elaborating.
Nvidia, which more than tripled its market value last year thanks largely to its pivotal role in AI development, is up another 20 percent this year as investors bet on its sector leadership. It has designed versions of its semiconductors for China that it says are compliant with successive rounds of US sanctions, as Washington watches closely.
Among the social media posts, one person describing himself as an Nvidia staffer shared an image of Huang handing over a raffled Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card. The CEO has since moved on to Taiwan for his fourth visit to the country in less than a year.
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